


Somewhere in Mid-Air

by Anonymous



Series: This Moment and Every Moment [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: (for fool-the-bad-guys reasons), (for trauma reasons), Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Protective Everyone, Rape, Self-Induced Vomiting, Self-Sacrifice, minor self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:55:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26701771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “We can’t let it happen to her.” Nicky says, like Joe could have forgotten. “You know I’ll be OK.”“I don’t, Idon’tknow that,” Joe retorts passionately. The tears have been close for a while, now they overflow. “Nicky. Youwon’t.”Nicky shuts his eyes, lets his head fall back against the wall behind him. “In time,” he says softly. “I will be in time. Stop fighting me. Please.”---Captured along with Nile, Joe and Nicky are determined to protect her. Even if this is what it costs.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: This Moment and Every Moment [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2025752
Comments: 178
Kudos: 636
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE READ: 
> 
> Written for the following prompt:
>
>> On a mission the team is captured and it becomes clear that the bad guys will rape someone. Nicky and Joe painfully decide it should be Nicky. It makes the most logical sense. They want to protect Nile who is so young and they feel responsible for her, and Andy is mortal and already hurt [...]. Joe obviously argues it should be him because of course he does, he's Joe. But they know that to successfully manipulate their captors to do what they want and leave Nile and Andy alone they have to be careful and make a really appealing target, and they know people always think Nicky is a mouse. He's the best choice to purposefully make a target.
>> 
>> Devastated but determined Joe and Nicky purposefully planning for Nicky to be raped. Joe in agony, but knowing they must. Nile and Andy horrified. Joe in tears."
> 
> I took Andy out of the picture as a possible victim, for reasons that will become obvious, and I don't know if I'd characterise this Nicky as someone who's necessarily _always_ perceived as a mouse, so much as he recognises he has an opportunity to play the part on this occasion.
> 
> But in essence that is what happens.
> 
> I am most interested in the Before and the After. (This is ultimately an H/C fic more than anything else, although it also explores the way that giving and receiving comfort can be terribly difficult). I have split the chapters so you can avoid the During if you want. Go straight from Chapter 1 to 3 if you would prefer to do this. There are further allusions to past rape (not only the one that takes place in the story) in subsequent chapters, but nothing explicit or detailed.

“Joe. Joe!”

He jolts awake to find it wasn't a bad dream; they’re still here. Nile’s still asleep in an uncomfortable huddle against the pipework she’s chained to. The boiler room that’s become their cell has no windows, but it feels like it’s long past midnight. and Nicky, who's managed to lever himself into a standing position, is calling him in a tense undertone from across the room. He’s the nearest to the door that leads to the gym of the old school their captors have repurposed as a training camp. They haven’t even bothered to shut it all the way.

  
From outside, Joe can hear voices raised in an old Fascist song he’d really hoped he’d never have to hear again.  
  
“What’s going on?”  
  
“They’re drunk. Maybe high, some of them.”  
  
“That sounds like good news,” Joe says — warily, because Nicky’s expression says it’s not. But drunk or high should mean a chance to level their odds a little. These aren’t seasoned warriors to begin with.  
  
What they do have is numbers. And guns.  
  
Nicky shakes his head fiercely. “I heard them — Joe, they’re talking about Nile. About getting her out there and …”  
  
The sick look on his face says the rest, and Joe’s been worried about that from the moment this went sideways.  
  
Their captors are young, and inexperienced, but overcharged like lightning clouds with the lethal chaos that sparks between young men whose biggest terror is seeing their weakness reflected in each other’s eyes. Men who’ll push themselves and each other further and further rather than let that happen. Joe’s seen it so many times before, he knows, all too personally, what it can unleash.   
  
And there are so many of them.  
  
“Fuck.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Joe struggles against his restraints, but he’s fastened too tight against the thick vent behind him, he can’t get the leverage he’d need to break the bones in his hands and the cuffs themselves are much too solid.  
  
Nicky does the same and gives up, shaking his head. “They didn’t get Andy. She’s out there,” he says. “She’s coming for us.”  
  
Joe nods, and doesn’t say that maybe they did get Andy. Andy might be dead.  
  
“Then I guess we need a way to buy her some time.”  
  
There’s a burst of drunken laughter from the outer room.  
  
They don’t know who they’ve captured, at least. Or they do in a way: they’d asked if Joe, Nicky and Nile were antifa, to which they’d said yes, and left the men rather at a loss as to how to take the interrogation further. As far as Joe can tell they’re now waiting for someone senior to arrive and decide what to do with them. He fervently hopes they won’t be sticking around for that to happen, because even if these thugs are next door to amateurs, the people funding them are decidedly not. It’ll get very bad very fast if they learn of their immortality.  
  
Joe glances from Nile to the door and back. Her wrists are tied in front of her, at least, but her cuffs are no less tight and sturdy and even if she could break or dislocate her thumbs, he doubts she’d be able to pull her hands through.  
  
Nicky asks, “Should we wake her?”  
  
“Not yet — we need to — there’s got to be some way we can get their attention off her. Nicky, we can’t let them do that to her. We can’t. Not Nile.”

She’s so young. The loss of her old life is still so new and raw. Her introduction to their world has already been so violent.

“Not Nile,” Nicky agrees with equal determination.  
  
There’s a silence.  
  
“Do you think they — would they only …” Joe’s throat has gone dry, his voice comes out thick. “… does it have to be a woman, or …”  
  
Nicky’s jaw works. Something goes distant but resolute in his gaze. He says, “Maybe not.”  
  
“I didn’t mean you,” says Joe, horrified.  
  
Somehow, Nicky manages to give him a wan smile. “I know you didn’t, love.”  
  
“Not _you_ ,” Joe insists, his voice rising in panic, struggling to get his feet under him. Nicky hushes him and they both freeze for a moment, looking at Nile.  
  
She doesn’t wake.  
  
“They haven’t seen me fight,” Nicky says. “They’ve barely heard me speak. They think I’m harmless. You broke that first one’s nose.” He smiles again, a hint of fond pride in it this time. “And he very much had it coming, but they _know_ you’re not an easy target.”  
  
“Yes, but I —” Joe fights a wave of dizziness as he contemplates what he’s arguing for, and what against. There are so _many_ of them. “But maybe I — maybe I can — use that. They already want to … teach me a lesson, I — if I piss them off, maybe it could be that way.”  
  
Nicky shudders hard. “Joe. I really don’t want that to happen to you.”  
  
“You think _I_ want — ”  
  
“None of us want this,” Nicky hisses. “But that’s worse, you have to see that’s worse. Listen, there’s no way to know it would work, what if they just work themselves up beating you and then turn on her? It’s going to be a long shot anyway, even if it’s me. But if it did work, if you got them angry, goaded them into it — they’d be more violent, than if I just …”  
  
“I don’t care.” It comes out tiny, broken, pitiful. He sounds like a child.  
  
“Joe.” Nicky strains against the cuffs again, not so much trying to get free now as trying, impossibly, to get closer to him. “Don’t you know I love you just as much?”  
  
He’s been avoiding Nicky’s eyes, afraid of the certainty he sees there, but he can’t look away from that. “Of _course_ I do.”  
  
“Then don’t ask that of me. Don’t ask me to let you get hurt more than any of us need to be. Not when I’ve got a chance of protecting you both.”  
  
Joe makes another wild survey of the room, their restraints, the door, searching desperately for something they’ve missed.  
  
“We can’t let it happen to her.” Nicky says, like Joe could have forgotten.  
  
There’s nothing. He doesn’t answer.  
  
“You know I’ll be OK.”  
  
“I don’t, I _don’t_ know that,” Joe retorts passionately. The tears have been close for a while, now they overflow. “Nicky. You _won’t_.”  
  
Nicky shuts his eyes, lets his head fall back against the wall behind him. “In time,” he says softly. “I will be in time. Stop fighting me. Please.”  
  
He’s monochrome in this sharp artificial light, all the colour gone from his skin, his hair dark with sweat. His shoulders are locked in a taut, clenched line. But he’s not struggling to take a full breath the way Joe is; his eyes are already ringed with exhausted circles, but they’re dry. Joe knows he’s afraid, but he’s still calm.  
  
Because he’s winning the argument.  
  
Because he’s right.  
  
Joe forces out: “OK.”  
  
It feels like ripping himself open.  
  
“You’ll need to help me.”  
  
 _Help me._ When he would do anything to help Nicky, but Nicky doesn’t want Joe to protect him or save him or offer himself in his place, he wants Joe to push him further into harm’s way than he can get by himself.  
  
 _I can’t_ , he nearly says. But that’s not fair. He’s already, unthinkably, _agreed_ to this, and Nicky asked him not to fight him. The least he can do is not make it harder.  
  
He makes himself nod.  
  
Outside there's more laughter, and then booted footsteps approaching the door.

Joe tries to ignore how Nicky's lips go tight as he swallows, bracing himself. He does his best to wipe his face against his shoulder and clears his throat. "Nile, wake up.”  
  
She snaps awake with enviable soldierly efficiency.  
  
“Nile,” Nicky says, all the fear wiped from his expression, “they’re coming. Can you get your face to your hands? Can you put your fingers down your throat? Do it, make yourself sick. I’m sorry, but try to get it on yourself. And even if you can’t bring anything up, as long as they’re in here, keep the noises coming. You’re _very_ sick, OK?”  
  
Nile doesn’t ask questions, just gets to work at once. Joe’s heart aches a little at how she trusts them. She probably thinks this is an escape plan.  
  
They’re doing this for her, and yet it feels almost like a betrayal.  
  
Nicky looks across at him. “We’re arguing," he says quickly. "I’m a civilian, I’m panicking and out of my depth, and I’m pissing you off.”  
  
Joe nods again, just as Nile manages to produce a small splash of vomit, just as the door opens.  
  
There are six of them. Only six, but they instantly make the space seem tiny with their bodies and their guns and the smell of beer and sweat.  
  
“No, I’m not going to calm down, I didn’t sign up for this!” Nicky shouts at Joe.  
  
“Can you at least get this whiny little piece of crap out of here,” Joe says to them. “The bitching is worse than the puke.”  
  
If they weren’t drunk surely they’d realise something’s wrong. The script’s about right, as good as he can make it, but he can’t put any conviction into it. His voice is hollow.  
  
On cue, Nile retches heartily.  
  
“Oh, gross,” says one, stopping short as he approaches her.  
  
“You can’t treat us like this, I have contacts in the media,” says Nicky, before anyone can react further.  
  
“Ooh _no_ , not the _media_ ,” says someone, while someone else crows “The fake news!”  
  
“Jesus Christ, teach me to work with amateurs,” Joe manages a roll of the eyes.  
  
Nile gags again and moans. Nicky exclaims, “She’s sick and she needs a doctor.”  
  
“I know what she needs,” sniggers one of them, and grabs his crotch. Nile jolts back against the wall, eyes wide, as the rest of them whoop.  
  
“That’s disgusting, you’re disgusting,” says Nicky, not having to fake the feeling behind it.  
  
“Shut up,” says one, giving him a shove.  
  
Another, hair parted to one side and shaved high above his ears in a parody of a forties undercut, pushes towards Nile. “Nothing wrong with you a little party wouldn’t fix, right, babe?”  
  
“Sure, if you want to spend the next week running at both ends,” says Joe as loudly as he can, and hopes against hope that maybe they’ll just leave, maybe he and Nicky never needed this hideous contingency plan, maybe the vomit on Nile’s shirt is all it’s going to take.  
  
For a moment it seems like it. “Jesus,” says the undercut guy, taking a step back from Nile. “She stinks.”  
  
“Nah, she’s faking,” says one of them, uncertainly.  
  
“Ash said get the girl, he’s going to be pissed if …”  
  
“She’s not faking, and she’s going to _infect_ us,” Nicky shouts. “Do you get how serious this is? Do you know how many laws you’re breaking? You can’t just leave us here while you get coked up. This isn’t some _game._ ”  
  
“Shut up,” repeats the short one who said it before, and this time swings his gun towards him.  
  
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Nicky gasps at once, recoiling. “Please don’t.”  
  
“This fucking snowflake,” says Joe, catching Undercut’s eye, like they know each other, like they’re _friends_. “He goes looking for trouble, and then he’s amazed when he find it.”  
  
He should throw in a few slurs, it occurs to him suddenly. Emphasise the delicacy Nicky’s performing, pull him down another notch or two in their eyes.  
  
He can’t.  
  
But it doesn’t matter anyway. They hear him. They laugh.  
  
“Please, please,” chants Nicky. “Listen — we get it. We’re sorry. We won’t tell anyone about this, I promise. Please, just let us go.”  
  
“Aww, he’s scared,” says the tall one.  
  
“I think,” mutters Joe, too low and reluctant for anyone to catch except Nicky, who casts him a rapid glance and gives him a nearly imperceptible nod. Joe takes a deep breath and says, “I think Mr Armchair Activist here wants to crash your party.”  
  
“What the fuck?” says Nile.  
  
And Nicky, all helpless bewilderment, stutters, “What? What do you mean?” But he doesn’t look at Joe while he says it. He looks at the men.  
  
Maybe if they weren’t drunk they’d realise how contradictory Nicky’s body language is, how he’s bent his knees and drawn his shoulders in to seem as small and unthreatening as he can, and yet he’s the only one who’s on his feet, he’s the only one who’s insulted them, and while his eyes are wide and guileless and scared, he keeps pushing unblinking, provocative eye contact with as many of them as he can, one after the other. Insisting on their attention.  
  
“What are you talking about?” Nicky demands again.  
  
And one of them slaps him. Not hard, almost playfully. It prompts a chorus of laughter, and the others begin to follow suit, one after the other, and Joe sags in despair.  
  
It’s like a switch has been flipped, a spell cast. They’re all crowded around Nicky now.  
  
“Sure,” says the one with the undercut. “He can come to the party.”  
  
They find the very fact that they’re barely hurting him yet hilarious, poking and smacking at him like he’s too absurd and pathetic to merit anything as serious as a real beating, until they start to one-up each other, hitting harder, and that’s hilarious too.  
  
“Please don’t,” says Nicky, and flinches more dramatically than he needs to when they hit him again. But Joe can see the shiver that runs through him is real.  
  
“Please don’t,” they echo, like children on some nightmare playground. “Please _don’t_ , please _don’t_.”  
  
One of them presses a gun to his face and says, “Do you think he’s going to piss himself?”  
  
They laugh.  
  
“Let’s take him to the party,” says the tall one.  
  
And they laugh, and they grab him, and they _laugh_ , and they uncuff him from the wall. There’s a moment where Joe can see Nicky instinctively shift his stance, a moment where perhaps he could fight his way out of their grasp, take down at least a couple of them —  
  
— and then the rest would shoot him, and their secret would be left uncovered, and there would be nothing between the men and Nile. And nothing between the men and Joe.  
  
Nicky goes still.  
  
He doesn’t resume the performance, he just hangs there between them, unresisting and expressionless as they drag him to the door, and Joe can’t even scream a protest.  
  
Nile can. She wrenches against her chains like she honestly thinks she can pull the pipes clear from the wall, like she can slaughter the entire squad unarmed and with her hands tied, and howls, “Get off him, get your hands off him. _Nicky!_ ”  
  
And Joe shouts in old Zeneize, “Nicolò, I love you. I’ll be with you. I’ll love you beyond the end of the world.”  
  
But Nicky doesn’t look back at either of them, as he lets the men bundle him out of the room.  
  
  
  
  
Nile collapses back against the wall.  
  
“What the fuck,” she repeats, mostly to herself, then louder, appalled, “Joe, what the _fuck_ , why did you _say that_ — they’re going to — ”  
  
The first sob rips its way through Joe like shrapnel. He draws up his knees and presses his forehead against them, rocking as he cries.  
  
And Nile figures it out.  
  
“Oh no,” she says softly. “Oh, God, oh no. Joe. I’m so sorry.”  
  
Joe’s crying too hard to answer, almost too hard to breathe.  
  
From outside the door there’s the sound of some large piece of furniture scraping across the wooden floor, the thud of a body striking a hard surface, then a clamour of cruel cheers and spiteful laughter. And much quieter in the midst of it, but still horribly clear, Nicky’s voice, choking on a scream.  
  
Joe flinches so hard he knocks his head back with ringing force against the vent and yanks his cuffs tight, just for the sake of the pain that bites into his wrists. He gasps out Nicky’s name.  
  
Nile drags herself as close to him as she can, and begins to cry too.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter here to make it easier to skip the During should you wish.

  
The man violating him doesn’t want to do it.  
  
Nicky can feel it in his shifting, sweaty-handed grip, his stuttering rhythm, the way he’s hurting him less than the first two did.  
  
He opens his eyes and looks back over his shoulder as far as he can. He says dispassionately, “You know this is wrong.”  
  
“Shut up,” the stranger shoves harder against, inside him, violently enough to make him gasp. Still, Nicky doesn’t look away.  
  
“And yet you would rather be a rapist than say no to your friends.”  
  
The man’s hands falter and loosen on his hips, he huffs unhappily, and to Nicky’s distant surprise mutters “ _Fuck_ this”, and lurches away from him, hastily tucking his softening erection back into his pants. He vanishes into a din of laughter which for once isn’t directed at Nicky.  
  
The hands holding his shoulders down against the surface of the table disappear for an instant and Nicky makes a barely-voluntary effort to stand, his body pushing toward freedom of its own accord, but the respite only lasts seconds, someone else takes over, slams him back into place and leans his weight on him. His wrists have been tied again, in front of him now — and he hopes he’ll have a chance to make them regret that — but for now his hands are crushed underneath him against his torso, digging into his diaphragm so he can’t even breathe deep enough to steady himself. He can’t hold on to anything. He isn’t pretending to be helpless any more.  
  
Another of them lunges in towards him, whooping as though embarking on some witlessly impressive act of drunken bravado, and tears into his body. Nicky tries, clenches his teeth but the pain rips his breath away on a cry.  
  
The others will hear. At least they can’t _see_ this but they’ll hear. It will lacerate Joe to hear him like this.  
  
The men laugh. They keep laughing.  
  
A song pounds tinnily from the speakers of a phone. Someone carelessly puts a half-empty beer can down beside him and it tips over as the table jolts, wetness pooling underneath him. He thinks he catches a click somewhere in all the noise, the tail-end of a flash sparking through the blur of grinning faces above him. Is someone _photographing_ this?  
  
They’re so young. And soon, Nicky assures himself coldly, they will be dead. Such a small amount of time, and this is what they’ve learned to do with it.  
  
He shuts his eyes again. He finds himself thinking, I’ve seen too much, I’ve lived too long.  
  
No.  
  
The thought yawns below him, bottomless, and inch by inch, hand over hand, Nicky drags himself away from it.  
  
This isn’t meaningless. This is a siege and he is a shield wall. Every second this happens to him is another second the others are safe. He needs to be here for that.  
  
He isn’t alone. _I’ll be with you_ , Joe had shouted, and he’d understood. Joe’s soul is twined around his in this moment and in all moments; a wall between them, violent hands on him make no difference to that. _Beyond the end of the world._ They won’t last that long, but maybe the light they cast will, somehow, like that of burned-out stars still racing across the universe. A beam that stretches from the past into the future, traversing this horror and extending further beyond it than the men using him could begin to imagine.  
  
Nicolò steps as far away from his body as he can and goes to meet Yusuf, somewhere in mid-air.  
  


***  
  


It’s the sound of gunshots that calls him back.  
  
He winces in revulsion as his rapist spills inside him, and then feels him pull back, slow and fumbling with his trousers as the volley of sound echoes through the gym.  
  
They don't react as fast as they should, dazed with alcohol and cocaine, but the noise rings off the high ceiling and the glossy wooden floor so it's hard, at first, to get a clear sense of where it's coming from.  
  
Someone turns off the music. The crowd around Nicky thins; he sees some of the others grab their guns, and too late, run for the doors.  
  
Then, much closer, another burst of gunfire. His eardrums shatter as a grenade blasts into the room.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you skipped the last chapter, all you really need to know is that it ends like this:
>
>> The crowd around Nicky thins; he sees some of the others grab their guns, and too late, run for the doors.
>> 
>> Then, much closer, another burst of gunfire. His eardrums shatter as a grenade blasts into the room.

Andromache follows in the path of the explosion like wildfire after lightning. The three nearest the door are dead almost before the flash has faded.

Nicky, too, moves in the split-second the hands on him loosen their grip. Of course, he recovers far faster from the onslaught of sound than his captors can, but that isn’t all. Whatever they’ve practised here, they’ve never seen real combat before. They don’t know how to overcome the instinct to _wait_ to recover, how to act without taking a second to absorb shock or noise or pain first. He does.

He launches off the table, swivelling, and seizes the man who was inside him seconds ago by his shirt. He hasn’t healed yet, can’t keep his balance, but he doesn’t need to. He follows the momentum round, pivoting them both and using his own toppling weight to bring the man down and smash the vertebrae of his neck against the edge of the table. The impact flips it onto its side and Nicky takes advantage of the impromptu shelter to rob the corpse of its gun and drag his jeans up as best he can.

The two men who were holding him down have fled to the side of the room and drawn their guns, but there’s nowhere to hide there, and they’re too focused on Andy until it’s too late. One of them manages to clip his side and Nicky’s chained hands make his grip on the pistol awkward, throw off his aim — but not, for them, by nearly enough.

He can’t afford for it to be personal after that; there’s no time to single out the ones who forced their way into him from those who watched, or waited their turn, or ignored it as it went on in the background. Andy is finally wearing the Kevlar Nile’s been nagging her about for months and she’s blazing through paramilitaries like they’re made of paper. But still she’s so outnumbered, and it’ll only take one lucky shot, one ricochet …

Nicky’s got to take as many down for her as he can.

One of them, with no cover within reach, charges Andy head on, firing. She swings her labrys into his neck and uses it like a harpoon to drag him up against her, using his dying body as a shield as she advances, firing left handed around him and killing another as he backs away.

She spins, shoving the corpse at another pair that try to rush her from behind and whirls into them with lethal grace as they stagger, labrys slashing.

The survivors that remain are regrouping behind such defensive positions as they can improvise. To his left, halfway between him and Andy, a trio of them have taken cover behind an old gym horse; closer, and on the right there’s another cluster are using a stack of crash mats as a makeshift parapet.

Nicky picks off two on the left easily but then has to turn and fire too fast and misses his shot at one taking aim at Andy from behind the mats. He makes the man duck back before he can pull the trigger, but he’s still alive. Meanwhile, the last of the men by the gym horse flattens himself behind the corpses and continues to shoot, propped on his elbows, and while Nicky wastes three rounds trying to get at him, the team on the right have dragged one of their crash mats over so they’re shielded on both sides now.

He breaks cover, skids across the room towards the gym horse, and shoots the survivor point-blank. Maybe once, lifetimes ago, he’d have felt a flash of satisfaction at the shock on the face of the young man with the high-shaved hair. But now there’s nothing, only disgust at having to get this close, even to kill him.

A bullet tears through his thigh from across the room as he turns and hurls himself towards the other position. He drags the mat aside and fires blindly, not knowing if he hits anyone or not.

Andy is coming, a tornado of fire and steel.

He doesn’t hear the shot that fells him, just finds himself suddenly flung back, the gun flying from his grasp as he hits the floor, before he notices the pain that spears through his chest or the sudden bloom of red on the front of his shirt. He tries to lift his head to look for Andy but he feels his torn heart stutter wetly, clutching at blood that’s no longer there, and familiar darkness begins to eat away his vision.

Gunshots are still roaring over him. Hers, theirs.

He prays. If tonight casts another layer of shadow between him and a God he’s long accepted as incomprehensible, that can come later. For now, he has no time, and he’s not too proud to beg.

_Help her, please._

He’s glad for once that Joe isn’t with him as he dies.

* * *

The world pulls him back, washes him up like driftwood, onto a blood-wet floor and into a body that denies anything has happened. Andy is sitting quietly at his side, and there is no one else in the room alive.

She finishes releasing his hands. Nicky realises she’s already fastened his jeans for him and pushes away the sting of humiliation, trying to focus on the gratitude.

Half her face is scarlet, her hair soaked with it. Her eyes are ancient and fathomless and very soft.

“Oh, Nicky,” she murmurs.

Nicky turns silently onto his side and curls in towards his friend. He’s glad she doesn’t say anything more for a while. She just sweeps a hand over his hair and leaves it resting on his shoulder.

“Nile and Joe?” she asks finally.

He doesn’t want to speak, doesn’t want to disturb the quiet even that much, but she doesn’t know it hasn’t happened to all of them.

“Safe.” One syllable and it takes so much. He could sleep, almost, here on the bloody floor, surrounded by bodies, his forehead pressed against Andy’s thigh.

Somewhere Joe screams his name. Nicky’s eyes fly open, but even then, moving seems impossible.

“Come on,” Andy urges gently. “Let’s get everyone out of here and burn it down.”

She helps him stand, even though some of the blood in her hair seems to be her own and other than exhaustion, there’s nothing wrong with him. There’s no more pain. As always when he catches himself thinking, _it’s too fast,_ Nicky feels a stab of shame. How can he think such a thing? He doesn’t want any trace of those men to remain on his body, he doesn’t want to hurt.

But he starts to shake as he gets to his feet and it doesn’t, isn’t going to stop, and he knows he’s not going to be able to look anyone in the face, and in the absence of physical injuries, there’s nowhere to hide. There’s nothing left but what they did to his spirit and anyone can look right into him and see it.

Andy stays beside him, one hand under his elbow, until she’s sure he’s not going to fall. Then he points mutely to the door of the boiler room, and she leads him there.

Nile and Joe both say his name.

“I’ll be OK,” he says, his voice weightless, his gaze hovering somewhere in the space between them. He doesn’t want to see the desolation in their eyes as they look at him.

And yet he feels it anyway, their horror. It’s as though he’s been stripped of a protective carapace and now he can feel everything.

Nile says brokenly, “Nicky, I’m sorry.”

He hopes she means it only in sympathy, not that she blames herself. He hopes she doesn’t think the fact he can’t look at her means he has any regrets. He shakes his head and makes a little erasing gesture in the air, all the reassurance he can offer right now.

Andy had expected to find them in chains, so at least there’s no need to rummage through the corpses for the keys, but she has only one standard set. She releases Nile first, lets Nile sag and blindly push her face against her shoulder for a moment, then goes to Joe. Nicky would like to be the one to free him, but he realises it’s just as well. His hands aren’t steady enough for anything so precise.

“Nicky,” Joe repeats, eyes filling again as Andy unfastens his cuffs. As soon as he’s loose he surges towards Nicky, catching himself at the last second. “Can I –?” he asks.

Nicky takes his hand, but doesn’t move into the offered embrace. As kindly as he can, he says, “Not yet.”

Joe nods, swallowing, and the anguish rolls off him like heat from a stove.

Andy steers Nile out of the room, an arm around her shoulders, and Joe sees the badge of red on Nicky’s shirt, the hole in the centre. His free hand flies up, traces an appalled caress in the air.

“This too,” he says.

Silently, Nicky moves an inch closer to let Joe’s hand rest over his heart. It’s not that he can’t be touched at all, and he could never feel trapped in those arms, could never confuse Joe’s hands on him with those of anyone who’s hurt him. He fears that’s what Joe thinks it is, and he doesn’t have the words yet to explain, not even for himself.

He only knows he can’t —

Joe’s fingers shake on his chest. Nicky manages, “Let’s go.”

There is nowhere to go but back through the gym.

Joe surveys the carnage. “Ah. None left for us,” he reproaches.

Nicky loves him for attempting a joke, he wants to quip back; he wants to at least smile back at him in acknowledgement, however briefly or unsteadily. He hopes one of the others does so, Nile or Andy, because he cannot control his face at all, not in here. And when he sees the overturned table, the tremors get much worse, so much that he shudders to a standstill, has to clutch at Joe’s arm. And Nile has turned back on the threshold and is gazing at him with huge eyes full of despairing concern and he can’t stand for her to see him collapse, not now, not over this.

More than anything he does not want Joe to see that table, the body lying below it with its belt still undone, and realise what it means. But he does, of course he does; Nicky feels it happen and there is nothing he can do to stop it; he senses Joe following his own transfixed gaze, hears the short breath as he flinches.

Joe steps in front of him, trying to shield him from the sight of it. He tells him to breathe. He says, so gently, “I’m here.”

But that he is here, that _they_ are here is precisely the problem. He doesn’t want Joe’s tenderness _here._ It feels obscene that this room should contain it _._

Andy, all softness gone, orders, “Nile, go to the car and get the kerosene,” gives her a little push to get her moving, and comes back for him. Not asking permission and not gently, she grabs his arm and yanks him forward, more or less frogmarching him towards the exit, Joe scrambling after them to prop him up when the abruptness of it makes him stumble over his feet.

Then they’re through the door, and she lets him go at once, leaving him for Joe, and moves on without looking back.

The air rushes back into his lungs. He’s so thankful to her.

Joe waits beside him in the hallway, longing to help and helpless. When he can move under his own power again, Nicky takes his hand back, and succeeds in drawing a little strength from it.

“Four of them,” he whispers as they head up the stairs. Joe’s going to need to know, and Nicky doesn’t want him thinking it was worse than it was. It could have been, was _going_ to be, so much worse. There were fifteen, he thinks, gathered round him when Andy erupted into the room.

“What?”

It’s frustratingly hard to speak at all, and he can’t get any force behind his voice even when he does. It’s as though speaking and breathing have come detached from one another. It’s as though he used up all his words before, in that little room, arguing with Joe, drawing the men towards himself.

He tries again. “Only four of them.”

Joe stops walking and puts out a hand to brace himself against the wall. “Oh,” he says, winded, blinking hard. “Okay.” But they know each other so well he understands what Nicky’s trying to tell him. He makes an immense, visible effort. “But the others didn’t — didn’t touch you? That’s — yes. That’s good. Thank you for telling me.”

Nicky looks away. The others did touch him, they jostled and shoved and slapped as they dragged him across the room, slammed him down, held him pinned there. He doesn’t think he could manage that many words even if he wanted to.

He can still feel their handprints smeared onto him like oil.

The cool air outside, the stars above the trees help a little. The shaking settles somewhat, for now.

Nile and Andy are already coming back with the kerosene as they approach the car, Nile looking a little less distraught for having something concrete to do. Andy gives him a nod and a quick pat on the arm as they pass, as if this were any normal mission, unfolding as planned.

“Should we help?” Nicky hears himself inquire, distantly.

Joe makes a fond, sad noise that in another world might have been a laugh and says, “No, beloved. Rest here a minute.”

Nicky does as he’s told. They lean against the car, watching the dark outline of the building against the sky.

A fox shrieks somewhere in the woods.

“I’m so sorry they did this to you,” Joe whispers.

Nicky catches the first scent of smoke on the breeze. “I know.”

Joe bows his head over their joined hands. He begins, his voice cracking, “I’m sorry … I’m sorry that I …”

Nicky can guess where his mind has gone. He tenses.

It didn’t make it worse, Joe’s side of the act they’d put on. None of the staged insults touched him. It helped, if anything, not having to handle it alone, the shared sense of purpose even in something so desperate. It’s lonely not to have that now, and exhausting to think of having to argue it through all over again, now when it’s already too late.

This was the right way. He’s still certain. He wishes he wasn’t the only one.

Thankfully, Joe breaks off, and instead lifts Nicky’s hand to brush a kiss against his knuckles as the flames begin to rise.

* * *

Andy drives. Nobody speaks.

They planned the route with Copley in advance; the cameras along the way will reveal no trace of their passing. Nicky hears a siren wail somewhere in the dark as they speed away, but it’s far away and there should be no way to follow them. They should be safe. Should be. As they ever are, as they ever have been.

None of this should have happened.

The tremors simmer under his skin, not quite breaking the surface.

He can feel how desperately Joe wants to hold him, and he wants to be held, he wants to crawl into Joe’s arms and let him stroke his hair while he cries. He wants it and Joe is right _there,_ offering.

But he feels so filthy, blood and beer and sweat drying on his skin, and the men’s release still sticky inside his clothes. And Joe’s own devastation is so huge and palpable, and Nicky feels like it’ll crush them both if he gets any closer. He knows Joe’s _trying,_ for his sake, to contain it, conceal the scale of it, but he can’t, not from Nicky. And Nicky can’t make it right, can’t help, can’t soothe him; he’s the cause of it. He knows, abstractly, that that’s the wrong way to think about what’s happened, but he can’t find his way anywhere else. That this is _better_ than what it could have been doesn’t undo the fact that Nile and Joe are both shattered and it’s because of him, because of the choice he made.

They’re both so very conscious of him: at first Nile keeps stealing tormented glances at him in the rear view mirror, then she seems to realise that isn’t helping and slumps against the window instead, her face cushioned in her arm as if she’s merely sleeping, but sometimes her shoulders heave with a sob she can’t suppress. Joe too has stopped vainly trying to meet his eyes. But their attention still spins around him in tight, frantic orbit and Nicky tries to reduce himself from within it to the smallest possible point.

Limited to holding his hand, Joe is cradling it between both of his like it’s the most precious thing in the world. Nicky stares at the dark sky, barely breathes, and recedes out of the universe, leaving only that sensation as a tether so he won’t float away for good.

It’s a long drive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Don't give me that look. They're free! The villains are dead! Andy petted his hair! Joe is holding his hand! 
> 
> I could have ended the chapter on "... _He’s glad for once that Joe isn’t with him as he dies._ ", you know. Aren't you glad I didn't?


	4. Chapter 4

They’re staying in a faded holiday chalet that apparently overlooks a lake, although Joe’s yet to be here when there’s enough daylight to see it. As soon as they’re inside Nicky heads for the bathroom, crossing the space in long, swift strides.

Joe starts after him: “Do you need — ?”

“No.” The door closes.

Joe drops into a chair at the dining table, buries his face in his hands, and releases some of the tears he’s been holding in for the last two hours.

 _We’re going to get out of here,_ poor, wonderful Nile had promised frantically, in that room, while the awful sounds broke over them both. _We’re going to get out of here and then we’ll take care of him._

But he doesn’t seem to know how. All these centuries, all the horrors they’ve survived together and he doesn’t know what to do for Nicky. Nicky can’t even _look_ at him.

He hears his own voice jeering _I think he wants to crash your party,_ and wonders how he’s ever going to be able to look at himself.

Andy dunks her head under the tap in the kitchenette to rinse the worst of the blood from her face and hair. She ruins a tea-towel using it to dry off and hisses.

Joe stiffens. “Boss, are you hurt?”

“Ehh,” says Andy, unhelpfully, retrieving a bottle of vodka from the counter.

The reminder of her mortality kicks his heart into quick, panicked rhythm like a pebble bouncing down a rocky slope.

God, if they’d lost her tonight.

Nicky is always better at locking his attention to what actually is, Joe always sees the hypotheticals floating poisonously in the air beside the facts. He rises and goes to find the first aid kit, choking on an eddy of them:

If they’d killed her. As they’d killed Nicky. He’d had to fight, after what he’d endured already, while Joe sat there useless and safe and waiting, and they’d _killed_ him. And every death has had a different weight since Merrick — Nicky’s even said to him, _love, our odds haven’t changed, you can’t go on fretting like this_. But this — if this had been it, if those had been Nicky’s last minutes in this world; if the last time he heard Joe’s voice it had been taunting him, handing him over to those men —

No, not quite the last. If he even did hear Joe, as they dragged him out of the room.

The cut above Andy’s ear has already stopped bleeding, there’s nothing to do but dab on some disinfectant. He finds her an ice pack for what promises to be an impressive stretch of bruising on her shoulder, although she's much more interested in the curative powers of vodka.

Maybe there should be comfort in being able to tend to someone he loves, to thank her this way. But he can hear the shower running in the bathroom, and he’s not where he should be, and he’s angry with himself for wasting energy on useless loathing for dead men and panic over what might have happened, as if the truth wasn’t awful enough.

That first, terrible ragged cry. _Only four._

And if Nicky can’t — if they can’t —

They’ve never been promised that there’s no limit to what they can weather, that there’s no such thing as _too much._

He leaves the mess of medical supplies scattered across the table and slumps back into his chair, hunching in on himself.

Nile’s been standing motionless in the centre of the room, making no move to sit down or take off her jacket, or even put down the holdall of weapons she brought in from the car. She drops it with a sudden thud.

“He did it for me,” she announces, her voice high and thin and incredulous, like if she says it out loud reality will be forced to admit it’s too preposterous to be true. “He let them — let them _rape_ him so they wouldn’t do it to me.”

Andy glances at Joe, who confirms wearily, “Yeah.”

Andy grimaces, and Nile gives up any attempt at not crying. She wails, “I’d never have asked him to do that!”

“Of course not,” Andy agrees.

“I didn’t know — I was _asleep_ —he shouldn’t, he shouldn’t have—"

Andy interrupts starkly: “Yes. He should.”

“How can you _say_ —”

“Because I trust him,” Andy says, and her voice is so firm and uncompromising that it settles onto Joe like a weight, keeping him from scattering away like paper into a gale. She’s not talking to him, but he looks up, listening. “Because if he assessed that was the best option he had to get all three of you out of there with the least damage possible, he will have been right. He knows what he’s doing. And what he can survive. He’s been dealing with the worst of humanity for centuries.”

“Then he’s been through enough,” Nile sobs, and Joe flinches, because it’s too close to what he’s been thinking. “It’s not fair just because he’s old. It’s not OK just because he’s already been hurt. It’s not — he’s not OK.”

“No. Clearly.” Andy takes a quick, grim, swig from the bottle, her gaze bleak. “But he has reserves to draw on that you’ve hardly begun to build. That’s just how it is. Do you really think that you’d be less traumatised than he is? Than you are now?”

If only they could have spared her altogether. If only the centuries ahead of her looked any softer than the ones they’ve known.

“And how,” says Nile into her hands, “how am I supposed to deal with _owing_ him that?”

Andy’s voice gentles, finally: “Oh, Nile, it’s not like that.”

“ _How_ is it not like that?”

“He loves you,” Joe says quietly. “We both do.”

Nile’s hands swing away from her face. She stands there, poised, looking as if she’s about to scream or throw something and when she flings herself at Joe there’s an instant where he thinks she’s about to hit him. And then her arms are tight around him and she says, muffled. “I love you too. Tell him I love him too.”

He hugs her back. They hold each other as they couldn’t before, chained out of each other’s reach, and she kisses his cheek.

Then she runs out of the room.

Wordlessly Andy passes Joe the vodka.

He takes a swallow, and exhales, long and slow.

“Thanks.” He doesn’t mean for the alcohol. There’s a stillness in him now, some of the desperation has drained away. “Yeah. It couldn’t have been her. He’d never have – neither of us would ever have forgiven ourselves.”

She drags her chair closer to his. “Really shitty call to have to make.”

“You know it’s happened before. To him, to me. But not for centuries and not — not like that. Guess I hoped we were done with — ” He shakes, swipes at his eyes. “I’ve never had to _agree_ to it before. Worse than agree, I …”

“Tell me,” she murmurs.

He nods, and does: waking up to Nicky’s realisation, the argument, their decision, everything up to the point they took Nicky away.

Andy blows out a breath. “ _Fuck,_ Joe.” She puts a hand on his back.

It’s a bigger relief than he expects that she doesn’t instantly spot something else they could have done, doesn’t ask how he could have failed Nicky so badly. He knows there wasn’t, she wouldn’t, but still it’s there.

“I had to talk to them like — like I thought hurting him was funny. Like he was _nothing_ —”

“Yes,” she says, “you had to.”

“And he had to hear it.”

Andy frowns. “All right. Does he feel betrayed? Does he blame you? You’d know.”

Joe is silent, but not, he discovers, because there’s much to think about.

It’s true, he does know.

And if he hasn't seen that till now it's because … because it’s hard even now to accept it’s too late to suffer this for Nicky, that he can’t tilt the universe’s store of pain away from him, towards himself.

Part of him wants to be blamed, wants to be punished. But that’s him, not Nicky.

He shakes his head.

He feels a different, quieter remorse now that for all he’s been conscious of Nicky’s every breath since it happened, he hasn’t, through the fumes of his own guilt, _seen_ him as clearly as he thought.

It’s been so public, all of it, he thinks now. Surrounded by hooting spectators while it happened, and no say since in who knows or how much or when.

_Oh, beloved of my heart. What have you been allowed to hold back, except your eyes?_

The sound of the shower stops. Joe turns instinctively towards the bathroom, but then he hears the basin tap begin to run, Nicky brushing his teeth.

Andy sighs, and slumps a little. “I’m sorry I didn’t get there sooner.”

“Oh, _boss!_ ” Joe gives her arm a tiny shake. “You’re the only one they could have killed, and you carved through them to get us out. You saved us.”

 _God, if they had killed her,_ he thinks again.

Nicky would still be there. They’d all still be there.

But they’re not, they’re here, they’re safe.

Andy smiles crookedly. “Yeah, well. Do as I say, not as I do.”

She puts her other arm around him, closing the embrace, and he drops his head against her shoulder. “Always, boss,” he says.

“Their fault,” she reminds them both.

He echoes, “Their fault.”

The bathroom door opens. Joe wishes acutely that there was more privacy here, that Nicky didn’t have to move through shared space to get to their bedroom, but he does — without speaking, wrapped in a towel, there and gone in a second.

Joe tenses. He wants to be there more than anything, and he can't bear to make it worse.

“Go and help him,” Andy says. “You can.” But she doesn’t let him go at once; she pulls him a little closer. “He’s not alone,” she says, “and nor are you.”

* * *

When Joe’s gone, Andromache sits alone and remembers.

Mostly to see if she still can.

She was sixty, she thinks. Already counting herself old, in years if not in body, and from the standpoint of today, unimaginably young. It was two thousand years — perhaps — before she’d first seen a battle-axe and known, instantly, _mine._

She wasn’t Andromache yet. But she’d had a fast horse, a good sword, and she’d wanted to help.

She’d been riding south and east for a few years, searching out a reason for what she was, astonishingly certain that she’d find one. She remembers the wonder of reaching the immensity of bright water beyond the steppe, stretching all the way to the sky — she’d heard of it, but half-believed it couldn’t be real. The dizziness of realising she was unstoppable now, no one, nothing, could prevent her travelling beyond it, across all the world.

There had been a band of raiders pillaging settlements along the coast, looting, kidnapping. She’d joined a war-party of riders tracking them inland, rallying warriors from villages and camps along the way. She doesn’t remember the battle, although clearly they must have won, because later they’d made camp in the grasslands to celebrate victory.

But the drinking and sword-dancing had gone on longer than she’d cared for and they’d all begun to get on her nerves — she already thought she was _old_ — and at some point she’d gone off by herself to find somewhere to sleep.

And then she’d been woken up.

And she’d always been good with her fists, the best of her clan in a fight — but no better than that, not then. She hadn’t been expecting to need to be better. She’d trusted them.

She doesn’t remember the men’s names, or their faces. She remembers the grass was stiff and yellow, so it must have been late summer or early autumn.

She remembers perfectly how she felt, but the knowledge is just that, stored information she can call on, like vocabulary in a language. The ache she feels now — for Nicky, for the fact that after all this time it’s still _useful_ knowledge, that it’s never withered into obsolescence like so much else she’s learned and known — distantly includes that long-gone self, but has no particular extra intensity for her.

So much else still hurts: lives she has taken and lives she couldn’t save, nations fallen, villages put to the sword, beauty no one else remembers, and Quynh, always and above all Quynh. But not, in itself, that night.

She decides to let Nile have the next shower, but first she goes into the bathroom and gathers Nicky’s discarded clothes into a plastic bag. She’ll find somewhere to burn them later. Nicky’s never going to have to see them again.

She goes back to her place at the table.

That wasn’t the last time, of course. There have been so many battlefields, so many sacked cities, and she has lived so very long. And she’s been called wondrous, majestic, terrifying, the scourge of heaven and a fiend loosed from hell, but no one’s ever said she was particularly lucky.

A much more recent memory: the fall of Carthage. She’d lost sight of Quynh and Lykon in the smoke, then the Roman catapults had shattered the western ramparts and sent her plunging down to the captured streets below. And when she’d revived among the rubble, still dazed and just beginning to search frantically for her labrys, a pair of legionaries found her there as they went roving from house to house, and decided not to kill her immediately.

That does hurt, because she still grieves for Carthage, for its temples and gardens and the autumn sunset above the harbour, for the thousands killed and driven off into slavery that awful day. It hurts because it leads to remembering Quynh, who blazed out of the smoke like a comet, who killed the men, who wanted to burn Rome, not for Carthage but for her. And it hurts to remember Quynh’s hands on the reins and Quynh’s arms warm and firm around her as they rode away, cradling her afterward is in their tent in the foothills of Ba’al Kornine. How sweet it was, after millennia counting only on herself, to let Quynh care for her, how gentle and patient her fierce, vibrant love knew how to be.

Every memory with Quynh in it hurts, infinitely more than the fact of what the Romans did to her body.

And if none of it had ever happened, if the world had been different enough to allow for that, presumably she would be different too. But empires have flamed across the world and fizzled out in the time since Andromache’s mourned for the person that might have been.

Nile showers quickly and then stalks back into the living room in a clean hoodie and leggings, clutching her laptop.

She asks, “Have you seen the WiFi password?”

“There’s a card by the TV.”

Nile finds the card, bangs her laptop down on the kitchen table with vengeful force that cannot be good for it, and begins typing.

“What are you doing?”

Nile looks over the screen at her. Her eyes narrow, still wet but gleaming with rebellious light. “I’m telling Copley to find a trauma therapist we can trust.”

Andy sits up, alarmed. “Nile, you know we can’t.”

“We can. If we can have an ex-FBI handler who finds us Nazis to shoot we can also have a fucking therapist and we’re fucking getting one.” She sniffs, rubs her face with the sleeve of her hoodie and mutters: “It’s the fucking least I can do _._ ”

Andy shakes her head. “Nicky won’t agree to that.”

“Yes he will!” Nile cries. “He will, and so will Joe, and so will _you!_ You think it’s too dangerous? _This_ is too dangerous! You’re scared of being caught? What’s the good of being free if you’re dragging the cage around with you? And if you don’t see that yet, well I’ll _make_ you, you just wait. But if I can’t, if you won’t, if you’re all determined to go on just — just _suffering_ and hoping time is enough to fix it, then I’ll go by myself and you’re not going to stop me. I don’t care if this is how you’ve done it since the Stone Age, I don’t _care_ if it gets easier after the first few centuries, I am not waiting that long! There are tools that exist for this _now_ , and we’re going to use them, and when they invent something better we’ll use that too. And if you can get used to using guns and planes and the internet because you _need_ them you can get used to this, and you’d better start.”

She is incandescent with the force of her youth.

Andy contemplates, as so often these days, the expanse of time behind her — dizzying even to her — and the handspan that lies ahead. She’d like to think that over all that time she’s gained some kind of instinct for fights she can’t win, even if sometimes she picks them anyway.

She won’t be the one to set the course for the next six thousand years, even if she wanted to be.

And Nile isn’t asking her permission or approval. But, on the other hand, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want them. She’s _so young_. She ducks her eyes back to her email as her lower lip trembles.

Andromache takes a last slug of her vodka. She says, “OK.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I deliberately chose not to be specific about where the crew is for this story. The thankfully-dead villains’ use of language seems to be probably American/maybe British, but I was loosely inspired by the far-right bootcamp Steve Bannon was, fortunately, blocked from setting up in a monastery in Italy. So, you can either take some of the phrasing here - "holiday chalet" - etc, to mean that they’re somewhere in Europe or assume that they’re in the US and Joe, not being American, is just using international English for his surroundings.


	5. Chapter 5

The door closes. Finally no one can _see_ him.

Nicky’s hands start shaking again, badly enough to give him trouble getting his clothes off. His teeth clench in frustration as his fingers wobble uselessly at his belt. Joe would have helped with this, of course he would. But Joe is so hurt and so guilty, and Nicky understands — he knows it’s just a measure of how much Joe loves him. He knows he’d be in agony in Joe’s place.

(He remembers 1638, and the Swedish troops plundering Tübingen, the frantic hours searching for Joe and the twelve awful days Joe spent afterwards acting a cheerful, hollow-eyed caricature of himself before he’d admit anything worse than a beating had happened to him, even though Nicky had been almost sure from the moment he found him. He thinks it’s the only time Joe’s ever lied to him. Oh, whatever happens, whatever the cost, he’s glad he made sure it wasn’t Joe.)

But he’s frightened of Joe’s grief, of his regrets, of both of them being helpless at once.

He manages on his own in the end, and steps under the water. There isn’t a separate stall, just the showerhead over the bath. The shower gel is green, mint-scented, if anything rather too strong. The chemical perfume overpowers every other smell.

Still, it’s difficult, in the first seconds, to lay hands on his own soiled skin. He flinches from his own touch more than he did from Andy’s or from Joe’s.

The laughter.

Oh, what does it matter that they laughed? Why should he care? What’s the good of asking, _how could they_? There’s no answer that would help. He knows what they were, he can guess all he needs to of the pasts that brought them there. He knew they had that laughter in them; he _invited_ it. Would it really have made any difference if it hadn’t lasted quite so long? They’re dead, every chance they had to be anything else is gone for good and they won’t laugh at anything ever again.

But he hears it, loud as if they’re here, crowding against him, their voices echoing off the peach-coloured tile, going on, and on, and on.

He stops breathing for a little while, stares at the zigzag line of a crack in a tile as he reaches back and washes away every trace of them that remains on him, inside him.

When he’s finished he utters a sound, raw and quiet, but it folds him over and he has to sit, gasping, on the edge of the bath. He thinks it might be the beginning of tears and he tries to let them come; he thought he might break down as soon as he was alone. He didn’t want it to happen between there and here, where Nile could see and where it would have unravelled Joe too, and it didn’t. But he can feel it coming, building like ocean swell, and the knowledge that trying to fight it off will just make it worse doesn’t make it less frightening. He doesn’t want to have to lose the scrap of control he’s gained back, he doesn’t know how long it will last or what it’ll do to him. But it’s going to happen, sooner or later.

But not yet. The horror crests and crests and doesn’t break, and all that escapes from his throat is another whimper, a soft, breathless “oh.”

He can still _feel_ all of it, all of them.

He doesn’t realise until he’s already done it that he’s clenching his fist and slamming it against his thigh, hard enough to feel the impact ring through the muscle and into the bone. The pain glows and fades too fast and he wants to do it again and again until he can bring his body and soul into symmetry, if only for a second.

He catches his fist an instant before it falls again. He stares at it where it hangs in mid-air.

If this were Joe, Nicky would capture his hands and kiss them and say _love, you’ve been hurt enough._ He searches for a shred of the same kindness for himself, enough to remind himself that though it feels like it’ll help it won’t, that the urge will pass if he lets it. He waits, one breath after another.

Slowly, he unclenches his hand.

Then, quickly, he reaches out and turns the water as cold as it will go and steps back under the stream. The last of the impulse to hurt himself, and the phantom hands on him, dissolve in a blast of icy needles.

For now.

But now is all there is.

This isn’t seven-hundred-and-more years ago. It’s not going to be like it was then. He’s not going to need decades to learn that this wasn’t a deserved punishment, that he isn’t stained, that it won’t stop Joe loving him, that Joe isn’t _wrong_ to keep loving him, that he can be happy again. He already knows — he _knows_ —that all these things are true.

He turns the water a little warmer and nothing gets any worse and he scrubs his hair clean too.

This is as bad as it’s ever going to be, he promises himself. He knows he can’t count on the time ahead to lead tidily upwards like a staircase back to where he was before, every day a little better than the last. Maybe he’ll be here again. But it won’t be _worse._ And this, even now, isn’t destroying him, isn’t truly more than he can bear.

So there’s nothing to be afraid of.

Except that perhaps this time Joe can’t help, that perhaps what they planned together in that room hasn’t left him any strength to lend.

They’ve seen each other in lasting pain so many times. They’ve been heartbroken for each other’s sorrows as well as their own, so often that the distinction has ceased to mean anything. But though Nicky’s doubted his own ability to scrape himself back together plenty of times, he’s never seen that mirrored in Joe, never felt Joe despairing over him as if he’s _irreparable._

He hears Nile’s voice from the other room, raised in distress: “… _to do that!”_ the other words indecipherable over the hiss of the shower. Nicky turns towards the wall, pressing his forehead against the tile.

He didn’t get her out of there unscathed. Of course not. Not after waking to find herself the focus of that gleeful malice, and not after what she heard.

They should never have brought her there. Shouldn’t have exposed her to any of this. The plan had been to drain the camp of resources, not to fight if they could help it — they had only meant to cut the power and telephone lines to the building. But there must have been another, safer way. He should have been more careful. He should have been quieter.

No, no.

If it had been Joe, Nicky would never say such things to him, would want to kill anyone who dared.

So.

He exhales slowly. Pulls his attention back once again to the tightrope of the way ahead.

He did the best he could. Nile’s not in here, at least, washing herself clean.

He gets out and dries himself. He brushes his teeth too hard and gags a little, and leans on the basin until the nausea passes too.

In the mirror, he looks awful, for all that his body is intact and his skin is clean: grey and unsteady as if he’s bled half to death, eyes stark and transparent as glass. Still, he holds his own gaze.

Well. If Joe fears this is too much damage to mend, Nicky will just have to prove him wrong.

He has no choice but to survive this. But he _can_ choose to survive it, all the same. And he does, he will.

The resolution feels useful rather than comforting, like a piton driven into a rockface. He’s glad it’s there, but the act of making it also exhausts him so much he wishes he were unconscious. He wonders if he’ll be able to fall asleep, if he’ll stay that way.

He takes a breath as he opens the door, and walks the few steps to the bedroom before he lets it out.

Andy and Joe, holding each other, talking softly, falling silent as he passed. That’s — fine. Helpful, surely. He’s glad someone’s doing for Joe what Nicky currently can’t. But it makes his shoulders rise all the same.

He dresses for bed in more layers than he normally would, underwear and pyjama pants and a t-shirt of his own and a sweater of Joe’s. He takes his pistol from the small safe in the wardrobe and, as he’s done every night since Merrick — even between missions, even in the quiet places they go to remember they’re more than soldiers and the world isn’t only a war — he lays it on the table by the bed.

He’s just realising both that he wants it far more than is normal, even by post-Merrick standards, and that he can’t keep it, can’t be trusted with it tonight or for an unknowable number of nights ahead, when there’s a soft knock at the door. As though Joe — of course he knows it’s Joe — knows exactly what he’d choose to wear and how long it would take him to put it on. Probably he does. And Nicky can’t remember when he’s last had to say _come in_ to Joe, the words feel unnatural. He goes and opens the door.

Joe steps into the room, nervous and tentative like he’s still not sure he’s allowed to be there. He closes the door and then turns back to Nicky and their eyes meet.

Something clenched in Nicky’s chest begins to loosen. He looks at Joe. He _can_ look at Joe, who no longer looks as if the sight of Nicky splinters him. He’s still haggard and his beautiful eyes are terribly sad, but they brighten in answering relief to Nicky’s gaze, and Nicky says, almost before he can think about it, “You can touch me.”

His voice isn’t normal but at least it’s there.

Joe moves forward eagerly and Nicky expects to be enveloped in an immediate bearhug, but Joe is clearly still wary of going too fast. His hands alight on Nicky’s arms, stroking softly. One lingers there, curled around his bicep, the thumb caressing him through the fabric of his sleeve, while the other skims upward to cradle his face. Nicky sighs, and leans his cheek against Joe’s palm, trembling a little.

“I love you so,” Joe murmurs.

Nicky comes closer, his hands on Joe’s waist. He lets his forehead rest against Joe’s, feels their breath intertwine. The corners of his mouth lift in a smile, tiny but unforced, and he echoes, “‘Beyond the end of the world.’”

Joe’s warm fingers trace his cheekbone, his jaw. “I wasn’t sure you heard.”

“Of course I did.”

He wants to tell Joe that it helped, but a shudder catches him as he remembers having to force himself not to resist, letting them drag him through the door as Joe’s voice rang out, and he whispers, “I’m sorry.”

“What — why?”

“Putting you through this.”

Joe makes a pained little noise of protest and disbelief.

Nicky jerks his face away — further, more sharply than he intends to. “Yes, all right, it’s an absurd thing to say.” He means it to be wryly self-deprecating — he _does_ know it’s irrational, he _knows_ none of this is his fault.

But it comes out tight and hurt.

There’s a pause. He glances at Joe and sees panic flare in his eyes again.

But then it fades.

“Nicolò.” His hands resettle on Nicky’s shoulders, steady, bracing. He says carefully, “it’s an altruistic thing to say, and thus so very like you. It’s not absurd, it’s … _inaccurate,_ that’s all, to say you’ve put me through anything. My dearest, you’ve done the very opposite of anything wrong.”

Nicky sags, still exasperated with himself. “I know, I know.”

He lets Joe’s arms fold round him, closing the last of the space between them.

“Nile loves you, she says,” Joe presses Nicky a little closer. His beard is soft against Nicky’s cheek. “So. There’s a lot of that about.” Nicky smiles again, faintly. Joe’s voice catches as he goes on. “You did it. You kept her safe. You protected her. And — and me, you protected me too. You — ” Nicky can feel him pull in a breath, how he has to swallow a couple of times before he can make himself say it: “You did right.”

The relief is so sudden and intense that it undoes him completely.

His knees buckle under him. Nicky gasps, “ _Yusuf_ — ” as he crumples in Joe’s arms, and Joe staggers, but holds him up.

“I’ve got you.” 

“I can’t — ”

He doesn’t know what he’s trying to say, but Joe somehow seems to: “Then don’t.”

And the tremors roar back, but it’s not _shaking_ any more. It’s an avalanche, an earthquake; there is no air and no ground and he was wrong, he cannot bear it after all, he cannot stop it wrenching him apart and it does, it does and he lets it, the pieces of him contained within the circle of Joe’s arms. Joe’s arms, holding him together.

It goes on for lifetimes and after lifetimes it stops feeling like it’s killing him. They’re just sobs, jagged and deep, but not death throes. He’s on the bed, curled in Joe’s arms, his hands clutching fistfuls of Joe’s shirt. He’s just crying and Joe’s holding him, that’s all.

He lies there, listening. Joe's whispering to him, he’s been whispering the whole time in a soft tangle of languages: My beloved, my treasure, my heart. Te véuggio bén, nhebek, I love you.

“They kept laughing.”

Joe strokes his back, his other hand cupped over Nicky’s head. “I know.”

He hates that Joe knows. It helps that Joe knows. He leaves the contradiction where it is.

“I hit myself in the shower. I won’t again.”

Joe winces and his fingers tighten for a moment on Nicky’s hair, but the rhythm of his hand on Nicky’s back doesn’t falter. “Tell me, if you do, if you want to.”

Nicky nods against the wet patch he’s wept into Joe’s shirt. Then he thinks of something and struggles to sit up. “My gun. Can you — I can’t have it. No, no. Not because I’d hurt myself, I wouldn’t. But if I — dream, if I woke up too fast, I could hurt _you,_ or — God, if Andy came in and I—"

“Shh. You won’t. It’s all right. Shift over a bit.”

It’s hard, to let go of Joe even this much, but he needs to be sure of this. Joe takes the opportunity to finally kick his shoes off, and also to get the covers over them both. He makes a slightly elaborate show of demonstrating that the gun’s easily within his reach but not in Nicky’s, of checking the safety, then settles back down, gathering Nicky close again, his body a barrier between him and the world.

Nicky nearly always sleeps on the outside; if there is a side closer to a door then he takes it. At first it feels strange, wrong almost, to be lying here instead. But then Joe tells him, “There, everyone’s safe.”

Even Nicky’s startled by how utterly his body seems to take Joe’s word for it, how immediately the phrase extinguishes the tension in his muscles. He sinks onto Joe’s chest, resting there now rather than clinging on for life itself.

Joe sighs a little and Nicky asks, “What?”

“Nothing I didn’t already know,” Joe answers sadly. “You deserve so much better.”

Nicky thinks they both do, they all do. He kisses the closest patch of bare skin he can reach without moving — the base of Joe’s throat — instead of saying so.

“The things I said,” Joe begins. He must feel Nicky’s shoulders tighten slightly. “You don’t have to say anything, you don’t have to tell me it’s all right. I know, we agreed. We had to, I know. I just want you to hear the truth instead. I want to tell you what I saw, watching you: how brave you were. So brave, Nicolò.”

Nicky buries his face against Joe, as another spasm of crying runs through him. He confesses, “I don’t feel it now.”

Joe kisses his hair. “Now you don’t have to be.”

“I’ll be OK,” Nicky says, in a choked whisper, for the third time that night.

Joe’s crying again too, but softly, soundlessly. When he speaks his voice doesn’t shake.

“Yes, you will,” he agrees. “I know you will.”

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I speak Italian; I absolutely do not speak but can _sort of_ read some dialects including Ligurian/Genovese _a bit_ , and I lack the common sense to just use Italian like the actual film and write _ti amo _like a normal person. TL;DR, “Te véuggio bén” means “I love you” in Genovese but is it the right kind of Genovese? Is it too modern? I don’t know; finding resources on dialects is a bitch even when you’re not trying to work out what they were up to hundreds of years ago.__
> 
> _  
> _I do not speak any kind of Arabic, let alone Tounsi at all. I am pretty confident that “nhebek” also means “I love you”, but, similarly, is it the right version of the right dialect for Joe at this time? If you know, (or are an expert in …pre-Hilalian Urban Arabic?) please tell me!_  
> _
> 
> _  
> _I had totally decided I wasn’t going to use any other languages, including the one I actually speak, because after all, they aren’t “foreign” to the characters and Nicky and Joe are probably only actually speaking English to each other intermittently throughout the story. But then I had to go and want a line where Nicky was conscious of the multiple languages and so here we are._  
> _
> 
> _  
> _Thanks so much for reading! I always love to hear from you.__  
> 


	6. LINK TO SEQUEL

[...I found I couldn't quite leave it there after all. I'm now working on a sequel, which begins here: [The Vanish Zone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27699586/chapters/67790866).]


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